Forging Elite Fitness

Last week, I wrote a little bit about Paleo and what it means to eat Paleo. This week, we're going to talk about a Ketogenic diet.

A Ketogenic diet is high fat and low carb. The term Ketogenic comes from what happens to your body when you limit your carbohydrates and replace them with fat. Typically, your carb intake is limited to 50g or less per day when you go Keto. Being that carbs are your first body's first source of energy, when you decrease your carb intake, your body begins using fat as it's source of energy and produces ketones in your liver which are then utilized by your body for energy resulting in your body going into "ketosis". Your body has virtually an unlimited supply of fat and Keto gives us a way to use it (and burn it!) as fuel.

Now some of you may be reading this and thinking, "you're telling me to eat a lot of fat, won't that make me fat?!" The fats consumed in a diet like this are healthy fats. We're looking at avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, small servings of nuts (these can be too dense in carbs), whole eggs, butter, etc. And being that fat is denser in calories than carbs, typically your caloric intake isn't drastically different because your body gets fuller quicker and you're satiated longer. Protein intake can vary depending on your goals, however to maintain muscle mass, you want to be consuming your body weight in grams of protein per day.

There are several different ways to go about utilizing a Ketogenic diet, the most popular among athletes being a Cyclical and Targeted Ketogenic diets. A cyclical keto diet means that you will have set day or period of time wherein you will "refeed" your carb stores. During this time period, you are trying to eat as many carbs as possible while limiting your fat intake. When doing a cyclical keto diet, it is important that you are in ketosis for roughly 5 or more days prior to a carb refeed. In a targeted keto diet, you are allowed to eat carbs post workout. Cyclical keto may lead to more visible results sooner than targeted keto, but targeted keto in terms of lifestyle and longevity, is easier to maintain over a greater time span.

As always, let me know if you have any questions and remember that there is a lot more information on all of these diets but I'm just giving y'all a nutshell version. ​